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Yanmen Pass
Yanmen Pass, also known by its Chinese name Yanmenguan and as Xixingguan, is a mountain pass which includes three fortified gatehouses along the Great Wall of China. The area was a strategic choke point in ancient and medieval China, controlling access between the valleys of central Shanxi and the Eurasian Steppe. This made it the scene of various important battles, extending into World War II, and the area around the gatehouses and this stretch of the Great Wall is now a AAAAA-rated tourist attraction. The scenic area is located just outside YanmenguanVillage in YanmenguanTownship in Dai County, Xinzhou City, Shanxi Province, China. Name Yanmen Pass, sometimes translated in English to Wild Goose Pass or Wildgoose Gate, is named after the wild geese who migrate through the area. ''Yànménguān'' is the pinyin romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of the Chinese placename written as or in traditional characters and as in the simplified characters now used in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Wall
The Great Wall of China (, literally "ten thousand ''li'' wall") is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic groups from the Eurasian Steppe. Several walls were built from as early as the 7th century BC, with selective stretches later joined by Qin Shi Huang (220–206 BC), the first emperor of China. Little of the Qin wall remains. Later on, many successive dynasties built and maintained multiple stretches of border walls. The best-known sections of the wall were built by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Apart from defense, other purposes of the Great Wall have included border controls, allowing the imposition of duties on goods transported along the Silk Road, regulation or encouragement of trade and the control of immigration and emigration. Furthermore, the defensive characteristics of the Great Wall were enhanced by the construction of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese form, to learners already familiar with the Latin alphabet. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, but pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written in the Latin script, and is also used in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The word ' () literally means " Han language" (i.e. Chinese language), while ' () means "spelled sounds". The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Zhou Youguang and was based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by the Chinese Government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as an international st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Datong
Datong is a prefecture-level city in northern Shanxi Province in the People's Republic of China. It is located in the Datong Basin at an elevation of and borders Inner Mongolia to the north and west and Hebei to the east. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 3,105,591 of whom 1,790,452 lived in the built-up (or metro) area made of the 2 out 4 urban districts of Pingcheng and Yungang as Yunzhou and Xinrong are not conurbated yet. History The area of present-day Datong was close to the state of Dai, which was conquered by the Zhao clan of Jin in 457 BC. It was a frontier land between the agricultural Chinese and the nomads of the Great Steppe. The area was well known for its trade in horses. The area of present-day Datong eventually came under the control of the Qin dynasty, during which it was known as Pingcheng County (平城县) and formed part of the Qin commandery of Yanmen. Pingcheng County continued under the Han dynasty, which founded a site with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sanggan River
The Sanggan River or Sanggan He (), also known in English as Sangkan River, is a river in northern China. It runs 506 kilometers and has a drainage area of 23,900 squared kilometers. In addition to its significance in hydrology, it is culturally significant as it has been mentioned in various poems, essays, and novels, including a poem by Chen Tao and an award-winning novel ''The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River'' by Ding Ling.Davis, 80 (note 1, on page 29) It is also one of the rivers that gave birth to early civilizations. Geology The Sangan River is a part of the drainage system of Hai River. It originates in Shanxi Province. It merges with the Yang He (洋河) in Hebei Province and then flows into the Guanting Reservoir. The outflow of the reservoir is known as the Yongding River (formerly known as the Wuding River). See also *Ding Ling *Shanxi *Zhuolu County Zhuolu County () is a county in the northwest of Hebei province, bordering Beijing's Mentougou District to the east. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Heng (Shanxi)
Mount Heng, also known by its Chinese name Hengshan, is a mountain in north-central China's Shanxi Province, known as the northern mountain of the Five Great Mountains of China. Heng Shan in Shanxi Province is sometimes known as the Northern Heng Shan, and the one in Hunan Province as Southern Heng Shan. Both mountains have the same pronunciation in Chinese, and the Southern Heng Shan is also one of the Five Sacred Mountains. History Like the other mountains in China with strong Taoist presence, Heng Shan has been considered a sacred mountain since the Zhou Dynasty. Due to its northerly location, often under control of non-Chinese nations, the mountain has a weaker history of pilgrimage than its four fellows. Indeed, to this day it is the least-visited and least-developed of the five, also the smallest in area. Because of this, Hengshan is not nearly as religiously important in China as the other Taoist mountains.Goosseart (2008), p. 481. But as a further consequence, it is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Postal Map Romanization
Postal romanization was a system of transliterating Chinese place names developed by postal authorities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For many cities, the corresponding postal romanization was the most common English-language form of the city's name from the 1890s until the 1980s, when postal romanization was replaced by pinyin, but the system remained in place on Taiwan until 2002. In 1892, Herbert Giles created a romanization system called Nanking syllabary. The Imperial Maritime Customs Post Office would cancel postage with a stamp that gave the city of origin in Latin letters, often romanized using Giles's system. In 1896, the Customs Post was combined with other postal services and renamed the Chinese Imperial Post. As a national agency, the Imperial Post was an authority on Chinese place names. When the Wade–Giles system of romanization became widespread, some argued that the post office should adopt it. This idea was rejected at a conference held in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mainland China
"Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. By convention, the territories that fall outside of the Chinese mainland include: * Hong Kong, a quasi-dependent territory under PRC rule that is officially designated a " Special Administrative Region of the PRC" (formerly a British colony) * Macau, a quasi-dependent territory under PRC rule that is officially designated a "Special Administrative Region of the PRC" (formerly a Portuguese colony) * Territories ruled by the Republic of China (ROC, commonly referred to as Taiwan), including the island of Taiwan, the Penghu (Pescadores) islands in the Taiwan Strait, and the islands Kinmen, Matsu, and Wuqiu (Kinmen) offshore of Fujian. Overseas Chinese, especially Malaysian Chinese and Chinese Singaporeans, use this term to descr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simplified Characters
Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters used in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore, as prescribed by the '' Table of General Standard Chinese Characters''. Along with traditional Chinese characters, they are one of the two standard character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the People's Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s to encourage literacy. They are officially used in the People's Republic of China, Malaysia and Singapore, while traditional Chinese characters still remain in common use in Hong Kong, Macau, ROC/Taiwan and Japan to a certain extent. Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially . In its broadest sense, the latter term refers to all characters that have undergone simplifications of character "structure" or "body", some of which have existed for millennia mainly in handwriting alon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Characters
Traditional Chinese characters are one type of standard Chinese character sets of the contemporary written Chinese. The traditional characters had taken shapes since the clerical change and mostly remained in the same structure they took at the introduction of the regular script in the 2nd century. Over the following centuries, traditional characters were regarded as the standard form of printed Chinese characters or literary Chinese throughout the Sinosphere until the middle of the 20th century, before different script reforms initiated by countries using Chinese characters as a writing system. Traditional Chinese characters remain in common use in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside Southeast Asia; in addition, Hanja in Korean language remains virtually identical to traditional characters, which is still used to a certain extent in South Korea, despite differing standards used among these countries over some variant Ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Placenames
Place names in China primarily refers to Han Chinese names, but also to those used by China's minorities. Origins In his study of place-names in China, J. E. Spencer notes that "although Chinese names indicate both domestic cultural and geographical influences, they almost never indicate cultural influence from other parts of the world", a tendency that also appeared to be characteristic of Chinese place-names in Singapore. Tibetan, Mongolian, Uighur and tribal minorities of China's names are phonetically transcribed into Chinese. In Chinese grammar Names for places in China, when referred to in Chinese contain a class identifier. In English this is often translated, while the rest of the name is not. The class identifier in Chinese is placed at the end, in English with the exceptions of mountains and lakes the identifier is placed at the end too. For names of lakes and mountains "X Lake" / "Lake X" and "X Mountain" / "Mount X" both is used. Some mountain ranges like Tian S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
